Database Reference
In-Depth Information
tools to automatically convert a set of tags into an RDF description (Maala, Delteil,
and Azough, 2007). These loose hierarchies generated by users are often called
“folksonomies” and are effectively a method of crowd-sourcing ontologies—with
all the accompanying issues of accuracy, disagreement, bias, and currency that this
entails. Some sites like Foursquare
24
ask users to input data within a fixed hierarchy,
which is more easily converted to RDF. Users are willing to do this as the data they
add represents an integral part of the application. The exploitation and linking of this
type of user-generated, semantically enriched data is a field ripe for development at
the intersection between the Semantic Web and the Social Web.
2.7 SUMMING UP AND SIGNPOSTS TO THE NEXT CHAPTER
This chapter has covered a lot of ground to lay the foundations for our coming dis-
cussion of the geographical Semantic Web. We explained the relationship between
the traditional Web of documents and Web of Knowledge that the Semantic Web rep-
resents. The concept of Linked Data has been explained, and we positioned it within
the context of other Semantic Web technologies and the history of their development.
Discussion was devoted to the benefits of the Semantic Web for both organizations
and individuals, including potential business models for exploiting Linked Data.
By describing the basic technology stack, from identifiers and character encoding
at the bottom, through to Trust and the user interface at the top, we have provided
grounding in the terms that the reader will encounter in subsequent chapters.
Now, we move on to discuss GI as it is today, summarizing its successes and
struggles. We also touch on how crowd-sourced geographic data challenges the
GI professional and how the two can fit together in the future.
NOTES
1. This axiom is written in the controlled natural language Rabbit; a brief description of
Rabbit is given in Appendix B.
2. The methodology for authoring ontologies discussed in Chapter 10 includes a step to
specify scope, specifically to reduce the likelihood of this problem.
4. GeoFeatures ontology,
http://www.mindswap.org/2003/owl/geo/geoFeatures.owl
8. Linking Open Data cloud diagram, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch.
http://
10.
http://sindice.com/
.
12.
http://swse.org/
.
14. As reported in
http://www.chiefmartec.com/2009/12/best-buy-jump-starts-data-web-
